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Google’s servers are migrating South in 2021. And East. And North. And Midwest.
Yesterday, CEO Sundar Pichai announced Google’s plan to invest $7+ billion in offices and data centers across the US. On the list: data facilities in South Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Nebraska, and Nevada.
Physical footprint
We pitched this story on a Hangouts video call, researched it via Google Search, and wrote it in a Google Doc; you might be reading it in Gmail. Those tools—plus web advertising, third-party cloud services, and more—are powered by Google’s data centers.
If you somehow sneaked into one of these cinder block buildings, before being tackled by security, you’d see a data hall full of blinking black servers.
- Google was operating more than 2.3 million servers as of 2015. Given the growth of Google Cloud alone, that number has likely shot up since.
The flip side: These facilities have staggering environmental costs. Data centers consume 10x to 50x more energy per square foot than your average commercial office building, according to Energy.gov—and altogether, they’re responsible for ~2% of all US electricity use.
- Just one Google data center reportedly uses 1-4 million gallons of water a day to cool servers.